A script is a sequence of commands written in a scripting language that may be interpreted rather than compiled. A scripting language is a programming language that implements scripts. A script may be generated using a text editor or a Graphical User Interface (GUI).
One example of a mathematical scripting language is MATLAB® software from The MathWorks, Inc. of Natick, Mass. MATLAB® software integrates numerical analysis, matrix computation, signal processing, and graphics in a language in which problems and solutions are expressed in familiar mathematical notation without traditional programming. A mathematical scripting language may be used to solve complex engineering and scientific problems by developing mathematical models that simulate a problem.
Code written in a scripting language may execute a task, like a function/method call, etc., by dispatching the task to a thread. Event notifications may also be dispatched to a thread for handling. The threads to which the tasks and/or event notifications are dispatched may be running in a computing environment supporting the same scripting language as the code executing the task, in a computing environment supporting a different scripting language than the code executing the task, or in a computing environment supporting a non-scripting language. A thread is a portion of a program that may be executed independently as a sequence of instructions. A thread, when executed, can perform a task, and multiple threads may be processed concurrently to perform multiple tasks. When multiple threads are running in a computing environment, each thread may be configured for processing a certain type of task or event. For example, in Swing™, the GUI toolkit for JAVA™, the following threads may be running at the same time: initial threads that execute initial application code, the event dispatch thread (EDT) that executes event-handling code and/or most code that interacts with the SWING framework, and background threads that execute time-consuming background tasks.